Mufti Muhammad Taha Karaan (RA) on Muzajjad’s Ubab

Wa `alaykumu s-salam wa rahmatuLlahi wa barakatuh

Al-`Ubab is not Ibn Hajar’s work. It was written by the Yemenite Shafi’i jurist Ahmad ibn `Umar al-Muzajjad. A substandard edition of this work was brought out in 6 volumes by Dar al-Fikr, Damascus in 2001, edited by Hamdi Damirdash.

Ibn Hajar penned a commentary on this work entitled al-I’ab (الإيعاب) commonly referred to as Sharh al-`Ubab. I saw and handled a complete of this commentary in the manuscript section of al-Azhar’s library.

Ibn Hajar’s one commentary on Ibn al-Muqri’s al-Irshad is called Fath al-Jawwad. It was published by Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi in Cairo. His smaller commentary on the same work remains unpublished to the present day. It is entitled al-Imdad and is preserved in Cairo’s Dar al-Kutub.

From the fact that Ibn Hajar makes reference to Tuhfah in some of his works (eg. Darr al-Ghamamah) one may deduct that it was not the last of all his works. Whether it was last of his major works remains to be determined.

Taha